Kessel’s Leaf problems starting to mirror those in Boston

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TORONTO — Leafs coach Ron Wilson struck an eerily similar chord with Bruins’ coach Claude Julien Monday when he said, among other things, that Phil Kessel would benefit if he expanded his hockey focus to include two way play instead of a singular, scoring-only perspective.

It appears now that the two coaches have the same problem in Kessel, and it will be a test of Wilson’s coaching experience to match Julien’s relative success with Kessel before the player demanded a trade out of Boston, apparently in part over his rocky relationship with Julien.

Both Kessel and Wilson tried to clear the air Monday after Kessel’s incendiary comments Sunday in which the struggling winger said he and his coach “are not like buddies or anything,” and that the two “really don’t talk” on hockey matters, like the one in practice where Wilson saddled Kessel with a new centre to help him snap out of a 10 game scoring slump.

“It’s his own frustration,” Wilson said.

“He plays more minutes than any of our forwards and sometimes you forget about other things, making sure he’s back checking with the same passion (as scoring). If you are one dimensional, you can be easily shut down in this league. Phil’s got to relax, I told him to relax, we have no issues.”

In addition to stressing the “no issue” angle, Wilson offered several excellent insights into Kessel. At the same time, Wilson echoed Julien, who similarly asked Kessel to focus on defence, but in the sense of getting into line with the team’s hockey approach, and not necessarily to break a personal goal scoring slump.

Rumours began to swirl of a feud between Kessel and Julien over the defence request. Even Kessel’s stick, reportedly, became an issue between the two, and the saga ended with Kessel requesting a trade, though he denies it happened quite that way.

“I’m not going to sugar coat this; he wasn’t any different than a lot of players to deal with at times,” Julien said after Kessel was traded to the Leafs.

“You never have smooth relationships because there’s challenges along the way. What you’ve got to do as a coach is convince those guys and make them understand and believe that this is what we need to do to be the best team possible, what you need to do to be the best player possible.

“We all know that Phil’s grown up as a superstar player and those guys will always be a bigger bit of a challenge. But I can tell you honestly that last year there were no issues as far as him resisting, and there shouldn’t have been because obviously his season proved that he was very successful.”

The question now is whether or not Kessel is more mature, capable of handling a coach’s request about his defensive play without it becoming an “issue.”

As a rookie in Boston, Kessel turned in a minus-12, but improved to a minus-6 in Julien’s first season (2007-08), then rocketed to a plus-23 and a team leading 36 goals in a final season in Boston that was apparently rife with tension between himself and his coach.

Kessel insisted his comments Sunday – “it’s not working out here” – were in reference to his linemates and not indicative of a request for a trade out of Toronto. Unfortunately for him, the “here” was interpreted as an exit bid, and he was forced to clear the air Monday.

Kessel also stressed he has no problems with Wilson, though the apparent lack of consistent communication between the two looks like a problem if Kessel is going to adhere to Wilson’s defense guidelines as one possible way to snap a slump.

“There’s nothing wrong,” Kessel said of Wilson. “We don’t talk often, I don’t think anyone talks to the coach that often. Some guys might, but I don’t. There’s no problem.

“Obviously you talk once in a while, but do I sit down and have a conversation with Ron everyday … no, in no sense like that.”

Wilson realized he’s dealing with a 22-year-old who is frustrated and places untold pressure on himself to score and lead the team. But Wilson is also walking a fine line since he can’t spend all his time trying to get Kessel straightened out.

That situation will wear thin in a dressing room full of professional hockey players. And even though Kessel and Wilson supposedly cleared the air, the fact the normally reserved Kessel went out of his way Sunday to comment on Wilson suggested there’s a lot more ground to cover between the two than Monday’s media scrum where both got to say the media took Kessel’s original comments out of context.

“I want him to understand I look at him as a 30 goal scorer, but when pucks aren’t going into the net, lets not break down and take chances that end up blowing up in the team’s face,” Wilson said.

“This is about trying to get Phil staying postive about his game. He’s getting chances, we talk about him getting chances, we talk about that and the only guy who can turn chances into goals is Phil. But doing other things (backchecking) may help him do that.”

“When Phil is a positive (positive plus-minus count), we’re 16-8-3; when he’s not, you do the math (5-18-3). We expect Phil to score, we want Phil to score, but it’s not about Phil all the time and the line worrying about getting him the puck so he can score. He might score tonight (vs Atlanta), he might not, he might score tomorrow (in Long Island) ... but he will score 30 goals this season, I’m positive of that.”